Saturday, October 8, 2011

I
had a conversation once with my old boss, Brandon Bond, about Ben Folds.A fellow songwriter in his own right (and a
good one), Brandon and I would often discuss the craft.That day, we were trying to figure out
exactly why we liked Ben Folds.We both
agreed it wasn’t the lyrics because, frankly, his lyrics aren’t that good.Now, before you Ben Folds fanatics (of which
I am one) get out your pitchforks and come knocking on my apartment door to
dispense your angry mob justice, I invite you to re-read the title of my blog.It says, “Songwriting Spank Material,” and
this episode is about Ben Folds.Truly I’m
not trying to suggest Ben Folds is a horrible lyricist.I actually think he is a good lyricist…just not a great
lyricist.He doesn’t, and probably never
will, hold court with Dylan, Cohen, Simon, or anyone else who is a master at
crafting quality lyrics. Brandon and I
also agreed that, while Folds’ piano playing is among some of the best in the
business, it wasn’t his musicianship alone that we liked.We just couldn’t figure it out.As our conversation came to an end, Brandon
eventually hit the nail on the head and figured out why Ben Folds is a great
songwriter, summing it up nicely if you asked me.I’ll get to that in a minute.

You
might think, after reading all these Spank Material segments, I think good
lyrics are the only thing that makes for good songwriting, and you’d be
partially correct.I do think good
lyrics and good songwriting are synonymous.In my own work, lyrics are the thing I take the most pride in.When I listen to songs, lyrics are the first
thing I hear.The songwriters I revere,
for the most part, are quality lyricists.I LOVE LYRICS…but I don’t think you necessarily need to be a great
lyricist to be a great songwriter. For
example (and I’m probably going to get destroyed for this because it borders on
blasphemy), in my opinion Lennon/McCartney were not great lyricists.THEY WERE
GOOD!NOT GREAT!GOOD NOT GREAT!PLEASE GOD DON’T STRIKE ME DOWN!Seriously though, while I don’t think
Lennon/McCartney were great
lyricists, I do think they were great
songwriters.This is because they
supported their lyrics with excellent musical arrangements, stellar lead vocals
and vocal harmonies, and they really knew how to utilize a hook (especially
McCartney).Ben Folds is similar to the
Beatles in this respect.His
arrangements are amazing, utilizing every bit of his immense musical and
production talents.His vocals are
always beautiful, and he has one of the best falsettos in the business.And finally, he baits his fair share of hooks
in so many of his songs.After being
compared to the Beatles in this way, it’s easy to see why Ben Folds is a great
songwriter, but I really think there is one more level to his songwriter that
makes him great, and it’s the nail that Brandon Bond hit on the head.

Back
to my conversation with Brandon.We were
standing there.We were getting ready to
wrap up our discussion of Ben Folds, and we hadn’t figured out why exactly we
liked him so much.There was something
we couldn’t quite put our finger on.Then Brandon says, “You know why I like him?He can make a bad lyric sound good.”I stood there, thinking for a minute, and
decided this was Ben Folds’ genius.Indeed, Brandon was right.Ben Folds
has a tremendous knack for taking lyrics that really aren’t that great and
selling them to us like they’re an ointment that will cure all of our
ills.Lines like, “…and check out the
reflections in my eyes […],” “You were not the same after that,” and “I’m
sorry, Mr. Jones, it’s time” would fail in anyone else’s hands, but when Ben
Folds sings these lines you feel like you’re hearing some of the best lines
ever conjured.With him, it’s all about
his delivery, his phrasing, the way he accentuates the syllables with the
percussion of the piano, softens them when they need to be soften, blows us
away with them when the moment is right.He anticipates the mood of the song better than anyone, and we are taken
there with him.Ben Folds is a used car
salesman, and we buy the car from him every time, and this is why he is a great
songwriter.Brandon Bond was right.

For
my Spank Material tonight, I go with a pretty obvious choice, if you’re a Folds
fanatic.I could have gone with any of
the following and picked a great one – “Annie Waits,” "Gone," “Still FightingIt,” “Zak and Sara,” “Not The Same,” “The Ascent of Stan,” “Army,” “Philosophy,”
or “Jesusland.”The one I went with his
a sentimental favorite, as I’m sure it is for a lot of people.Anyone who has a boyfriend, girlfriend,
husband, or wife, and knows this song says the same thing – “This is our song.”I love this song because it is painfully
honest, and I respect that about songs.I love it because Folds doesn’t try to do too much vocally.He keeps it pure and sweet.But mostly, like I said in the previous blog,
I am a sucker for songs that feature a piano that meanders.Here is “The Luckiest” by Ben Folds.

Monday, October 3, 2011

It’s been quite some time since my
last post. A lot has been going on. I moved to a new state, started law school,
and these days studying seems to be the way of life. I have very little time to myself to draw, do
music, or even write…but I feel like I need to anyway. Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of
music, revisiting old favorites, discovering some new things. As such, I have decided to post some new
Songwriting Spank Material segments, as I’ve always found them to be short, so
they shouldn’t distract me too much from my studies. So, here’s my first of what I hope are many
to come.

It might seem like this edition of
Songwriting Spank Material comes with some degree of bias on my part. Several of my friends and family know about
my connection to Willie Nelson. In 1999,
I was asked to perform with Willie at a fundraiser at The Hole in the Wall Gang
Camp. I was just learning to walk as a
songwriter, and the prospect of not only meeting, but getting to perform with
someone like Willie Nelson was tremendously exciting for me (on a related note,
I also got to meet Carole King during this time, which was also tremendously
exciting for me). What people don’t know
is that I was also excited to meet Willie Nelson because his image – red hair,
beard, bandana – and music had been a fixture in my life since I was very
young. My father was an avid Willie
Nelson fan and had every album, and when we still had a record player that
worked, my father would listen to those LP’s all the time. Willie’s trademark nasally tone, his
distinctive guitar licks, and everything else about his music would be synonymous
with the early parts of my life. It wasn’t
just that I was getting to meet someone who I respected as a songwriter…I was
getting to meet the person attached to a voice from my past.

Despite meeting him, and performing
with him, I still contend that Willie Nelson is one of the best songwriters of
all time, and certainly near the top of songwriters in the Country genre. What I’ve always loved about Willie is his
nostalgia for the old standards. Over
the past few years, I have also developed an affinity for the standards, and
the songwriters that wrote them, people like Hoagy Carmichael (who will be part
of a future Spank Material segment), Harold Arlen, and Ted Koehler. This is not only apparent in his album Stardust which is nothing but Willie
doing covers of some of these old standards, but it’s also apparent in all of
his songs. They all follow the same
formula that these old standards followed – a hook, simple lyrics that have
complex syntax, a straight forward melody.
This is probably why Willie’s songs (more them him) have enjoyed so much
commercial success. I also admire Willie
because he really took the idea of the concept album to another level with
albums like Phases and Stages and the
very famous (and awesome) Red Headed
Stranger.

This song, I think, follows that “old
standard” formula I talked about earlier.
It has an incredible (though perhaps kind of cheesy) hook, this line
that ends each verse, “Home Motel on Lost Love Avenue.” The production value of the song is
outstanding (produced by Daniel Lanois who also produced The Joshua Tree – U2 and Oh
Mercy and Time Out of Mind which
won the Grammy in 1997 – Bob Dylan).
Willie’s voice is really great with the slight echo and reverb going
on. Above all though, it has a piano
part that kind of meanders and harkens back to something from the Stephen Foster
songbook, something from another time in the history of music in this country,
but still familiar to me somehow. And as
you will find out from forthcoming posts, I am a sucker for songs with a meandering
piano. Enjoy.